Gaz, I would expect the government to wait, rightly or wrongly and see how the current restrictions play out. In truth it may be too late already to contain a second spike of the same proportions as the first. Bear, Billy do you know what the mortality figures were like when we first locked down in March?
We’re about 3 days away from that. We’re supposed to be 5-6 weeks behind France/Spain. I think we’ll overtake them in 2
I'm certainly not disagreeing that we're facing a very serious situation and the coming weeks/months are likely to be extremely difficult. However, we need to keep where we are (currently) in perspective.
On the day we went into full lockdown, 23rd March, the UK announced 967 new infections and 76 new deaths. That compares with the announcement of 6,634 new infections and 40 deaths in the last 24 hours. So, on the face of it a similar, if not worse, situation.
However, back in March we weren't testing anywhere near enough people and the virus was growing exponentially. The number of confirmed new cases was doubling every 3/4 days. New deaths were doubling slightly more rapidly than that. The positive rate per test processed was around 10%.
As of today, the number of confirmed new cases is doubling every 14/15 days. New deaths are currently doubling every 7 days. The positive rate per test processed is about 2% (and doubling approx. every 12 days).
So, the good news is that we're not yet at the point where we were in March, we have a better (if imperfect) testing system in place and we have a lot more data available now, which is enabling us to more accurately track our current position and likely trajectory. The fact of the matter is that we were in a much worse situation back in February and early March than anybody realised at the time.
However, the bad news is that, towards the end of March, we were coming towards the end of the upwards path and nearing the point where things began to gradually improve. This time, unfortunately, we probably have months of pain ahead of us.